Poem January 10, 1953 Issue

SOUNDING BOARD

Benjamin Sturgis Pray

Observe, for parable, how sounding board
Is cut, assembled, fashioned to afford
The maximum and optimum of tone.
Remember that piano strings alone
Yield no such full and resonant vibration.
Note well the skill, the patience of creation.
Where special spruce is planed and ribbed and crowned,
Is braced and fitted, so there may resound
At concert artist's probity of touch
A prompt and principled profusion such
As chronicles in all its rich appearing
Its own composer's ample inner hearing.

And likewise pause and ponder how the Word
Read at the Sunday service is not heard
In all its ample power and vividness.
In all its penetrating love, unless
Church-comers furnish for the Sunday reading,
From daily proof by proof in week preceding.
From Lesson-Sermon lived in daily act,
A sounding board of demonstrated fact
Whereby each fervent passage finds its own
Articulate integrity of tone.
A sounding board firm-fibered for unsealing
Full resonance expanding into healing.

Benjamin Sturgis Pray

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